Story Geometry Ben Hess

Attending a literary workshop can be fraught with highs and lows of creative feedback, a gorgeous natural setting, and amazing peers. Who happen to be alone 90% of the year, creating magic on a screen. Hear two first hand accounts of navigating the wilds of a writing conference in Northern California. Writers include Brittany Erickson Tuttle and Tony Pandola along with insights from award-winning novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III.

Meet 90 year old debut author Lillian McCloy, who was stationed in six countries while raising three kids as the wife of a CIA undercover agent. Host Ben Hess gets to explore the real experiences of this spy family, well beyond the detective fiction of his youth. He also compares the editing of that memoir with the experiences professional editor Jay Schaefer had working on Under the Tuscan Sun and creating a short fiction magazine in the 1980s.

Host Ben Hess takes his passion for film to the literary world and explores the ins and outs, ups and downs, of the often circuitous adaptation process. Guests include National Book Award finalist Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog, Townie, Dirty Love), Willa Award winning novelist BK Loren (Theft), award winning screenwriter Jonathon E. Stewart, and fiction author, teacher, and screenwriter Alan Heathcock (VOLT: stories).

Between 35 and 40 million Americans - that’s 11% to 14% of the population - move every year according to the US Census Bureau and real estate metrics site HomeData. Episode 14 features two chapters and spotlights authors at very different stages of their writing journey, Pulitzer Finalist in Nonfiction Luis Alberto Urrea (The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, Into the Beautiful North, The Hummingbird’s Daughter) and blogger Gretchen Howell. They shared several stories of impactful moves, and the effects felt on their writing.

This episode, Sexuality in Lit, features three writers who have incorporated sex and sexuality into their work in very different ways. Chapter 1, Tina’s Transformative Performance, features Fenton Johnson’s (The Man Who Loved Birds) account of a live concert in the late 60’s. Amber Keyser, is our Chapter Two, Mom’s Sex Book, subject and she discusses the challenge of writing about sex in The V Word while raising kids, and in Chapter Three, Shifting Identity, National Book Award Winner Mark Doty (Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems) examines our changing cultural landscape around the LGBTQ community.

Host Ben Hess is fascinated by beginnings - get it right, and you've hooked your reader. Get it wrong, and all your hard work is set aside for another story or book. He explores how strong works begin with interviews and readings from science and environmental writer Craig Childs (Apocalyptic Planet: A Field Guide to the Everending Earth, House of Rain), writer and teacher BK Loren (Theft and Animal, Mineral, Radical: A Flock of Essays on Wildlife, Animals, & Food), and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Luis Alberto Urrea (The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, The Hummingbird’s Daughter).